Urban infrastructure (roads, electrical lines, gas lines, water lines, buildings) across all cities globally scales with city size at approximately 0.85 power, creating a 15% savings in infrastructure per capita for each doubling of city size, showing extraordinary universality independent of geography, history, or culture.
factualpending
Speaker
Jeffrey WestEvidence Quote
“all infrastructure... they all look like this they scale in the same way with a similar slope of about 0.85 and it's the same no matter what Urban system you look at”
Source
Geoffrey West, The Simplicity, Unity and Complexity of Life | Natural Philosophy Forum Lecture, 2024— Hopkins Natural Philosophy ForumCreated: 8/10/2026, 10:45:11 PM
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